Lift me higher (let me look at the sun)
by awkwardacity
Summary: In the wake of Gunmar's defeat and the battle between Merlin and the Pale Lady, Toby attempts to put his broken friends back together.


"You did it, Master Jim!"

Blinky's voice echoes across the cavern, and Toby can't help but stare.

They're stood in the middle of the ruins of Trollmarket, surrounded by the shattered remains of trolls and gemstone shards. Blackened scorch marks scar the ground, and there's a streak of blood smeared across the closest wall - which Toby is pretty sure came from the hole in his side he's currently not feeling due to the adrenaline fizzing in his veins.

The few survivors - of those who stayed behind in an attempt to protect their home - shift, unsure if it's truly over.

Toby has no eyes for them.

In the centre of the Hero's Forge, the dust clouds are just beginning to settle, and through them Toby can just about make out a human shape, hunched over and leaning on his sword, which glows through the darkness of the cavern.

His heart jumps: there should be two figures among the ruins.

"Jim!" Toby cries, dashing across the space as fast as he can. "Claire!"

"Master Toby!" Blinky yells. "Do not go-"

But Toby refuses to listen, only driven faster by the prospect of being held back.

He reaches Jim first. His best friend is knelt over his blade, and even from a distance Toby can see how every breath shudders through his body in a pained spasm. His armour flickers in time, light sputtering and struggling to stay alight - scratched and marred with blood and soot.

"Jim?" Toby reaches a hand out to his best friend's shoulder. The moment his fingers brush against the warmed metal, Jim flinches as if shocked, head whipping up.

His eyes bore into Toby, alight with the burning blue-white electricity of Merlin's power.

Toby's heart thunders in his throat, but he swallows it and stands his ground. After a moment, Jim blinks, and his eyes return to that familiar human blue.

"Toby?" His voice is quiet and rough from screaming; channeling ancient primordial powers will do that to you.

"Thank god, Jim," Toby breathes, dropping his hammer to the floor as he sinks to his knees to wrap his arms around his best friend. "I thought I'd lost you for a moment there."

"I think you did," Jim says with a weak laugh which seems to knock the wind out of him. He takes Toby's proffered arm as support, pushing onto shaking legs.

Now he's affirmed that Jim is alive and relatively unharmed - physically, at least - his thoughts turn. "Where's Claire?"

Jim's face drains of colour, and before Toby can protest he pushes away, practically throwing himself across the space despite his weak limbs. "Claire!"

Leaving his hammer behind, Toby follows him over to the collapsed ruins of the Forge's equipment. One of the swinging axes is embedded in the ground beneath, wide fissures fracturing outwards from the impact. Totems lie discarded and shattered among fallen boulders and shards of crystal. Rock dust lingers in the air, so thick it burns to breathe.

He isn't sure how anything could survive that falling on top of them - especially the body of a teenage girl.

Then again, she's far more than that, too.

"Claire! Claire!" He ignores the crack and hitch in his voice, aware that he and Jim probably look crazed as they tear at the debris. Claire can't- she just _can't_ be dead. This isn't how the story ends for the three of them.

He recalls when she first joined their quest. How light Jim had been in the weeks following the reveal, as if he might float away at a second's notice. How jealousy had clawed at his own heart and twisted a bitter edge into his words. It had taken losing Jim for them to put aside their differences entirely, and Toby had felt like such an idiot for allowing childish pettiness to blind him.

The last boulder shifts easily under their hands, and suddenly the rest of the world falls away, because- _Claire_.

She's so still, is the first thing he sees. Crumpled on the ground, arms pinned at unnatural angles, blood and dirt covering her slack face - there's a lifelessness to her body which chokes the breath in Toby's throat.

"Claire?" Jim's voice is so soft, so utterly devastated. Static screams in Toby's ears, even as he feels the eyes of every troll watching them - all only able to see the destruction left by two warring gods.

All secretly hoping that Claire never wakes up.

She shifts, the faint whisper of an all-too-human gasp rattling from some deep place in her chest, and with that Toby breathes, too. His heart stops beating in his throat, though it still refuses to slow down, adrenaline making the blood pound in his ears.

A cough spasms in her lungs, rock dust puffing in clouds from where it had settled to coat her face. Jim reaches up to brush it away from her eyes, which crack open slowly, squinting against even the dull light in the forge.

"Jim?" Her voice cracks in the suddenly heavy air.

"I'm here."

She tries to lift herself up, and Jim quickly moves to cradle her shivering frame. The last month has not been kind to her - she looks like a ghost, pale and sick, face all angles and shadows. A faint sheen of sweat coats her brow.

"And Toby?" she asks. Her eyes are unseeing as she reaches blindly out, fingers searching for a second person. It takes him more than a moment to realise she's looking for him, and he hastens to meet her touch, curling his fingers into hers.

"Here. We're all here, Claire. Alive. Thanks to you."

"And you," she says, something akin to a laugh forcing its way from her throat, though it quickly dissolves into coughing.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

It takes a moment for her to answer, grip on his hand tensing. "Free," she says eventually, a look of bone-deep relief settling on her features.

He starts laughing. Maybe the sleep-deprivation and adrenaline are getting to him. Maybe he took one too many blows to the head, or he's finally cracked - he can hear the hysteria behind it. But they're alive, and safe, which is more than he ever expected at the beginning of the day; and before long his best friends, the two people he loves more than anything else in this world, begin to laugh with him.

Maybe, just maybe, the three of them will be okay.


End file.
